• Bob JH Cullen (3/5/2015)


    Well, Steve's editorial has certainly stirred up a debate, and in our particular ( and peculiar) case I feel not much closer to a solution. Having attended a couple of Red Gate sessions on the source control-based test and deploy process, which seems to me to fit in the state-based model, I wonder what their stance is on all this. I am at SQLBits, so I'm going to go find someone to ask.

    Pretty sure they're in the "state based" model. SQL Source Control is basically designed to make the database look like what you have in source control. I imagine they have similar ways to track refactoring along the way so it's not just "compare and push" when it comes to renames and things like that. I seem to recall that they have some interesting ways to handle scripts running in the middle of the release as well. (ALTER TABLE, run custom script, resume release sort of thing)

    Definitely sit down with them for a demo if you can and ask questions. If it's anything like the PASS conference, they'll have quite a few people on hand to help out and can bring in others if you have questions that go beyond what the first person knows.

    In your case, I'd say that blocking out some time to try out different ideas would be really helpful. I know that's easier said than done, but if you don't commit the time to it, it probably won't happen. We had to take time over several sprints with someone maintaining the DB code in the sprints while someone else did a lot of the heavy lifting to prove out concepts.